A while doing something else Euro-listen

Spotify has a playlist of the Eurovision Song Contest entrants. While I can't be bothered with the show, I thought it'd be an interesting listen... (The ones I particularly liked are *ed.)

Say Yay! - good Europop *

J'ai cherche - starts in French, moves to English 90s pop for no very good reason, then back to French

Ghost - a better song than its production shows. Strong contender for the 'oddest cover' award

No degree of separation - English title, French throughout. Sweet, but fairly forgettable

If I were sorry - hmm, good lyrical work. I'm tempted to see what else he's / the writer's done

You're not alone - sounds like one of the better boy band tracks, with a very small boy band (they're a duo!) The last words sound like 'I come a lot when I'm with you'!?

Sing it away - ok Europop

Utopian land - it's labelled as Greece in the Spotify list, but you'd know anyway. English chorus sung by the women, rap-style verses in Greek by the men. Not going to get anywhere

Falling stars - diva gay pop

Pioneer - male diva pop

Lighthouse - nicer production than a song

Slow down - 60s male vocal

LoveWave - I like the instrumental bridges more than the rest of the song

I didn't know - ah, this must be the one someone tweeted as 'Rex Harrison style'

You are the only one - much better synth work than vocals and lyrics ('thunder and lightning, it's getting exciting', oh dear...). Better as an instrumental, I think

I stand - it'd be interesting to know what the visual performance is like (or, this being Eurovision, what country this is) to know what chance this has, because the song is strong. My favourite record cover so far *

Alter ego - the first big use of electric guitars for a while. 70s pop rock

Loin d'ici - nice French female vocal pop

Play - good song, but this is not the best vocalist it will have

Miracle - nice song and production for the verses, pity about the chorus

The real thing - opens as 70s rock, loses its nerve, then becomes a mess

Hear them calling - good Eurovision pop *

Ljubav Je.. - another one of the few Spotify labels with the country and you'd get the region without. Good to have a local language

Walk on water - a bit too much of a mix between pop and Eurodance, but it'd be interesting to hear some remixes

Color of your life - a written for Eurovision song if ever I've heard one, and not in a good way

The last of our kind - a near miss for me, with the producer to blame

Made of stars - 'how many times can we use the title?' combined with an ishy production

Help you fly - messy production disguises an ok song

Goodbye (shelter) - ok, but by this point, a bit too forgettable

Sunlight - ok Eurovision 'soft soft LOUD loud loud' style

Dona - I thought the start of this was really interesting, then I realised it was a Spotify ad that, for some reason, wasn't in English. Oops. This isn't in English either. OK, but very few people are going to be humming or singing it

I've been waiting for this night - (looks at cover, wonders if he was picked for his looks rather than vocal talent..) Possibly as a result, way too overproduced

Sound of silence - name check for Facetime! Doesn't go too over the top too quickly, good stuff *

Blue and red - the lyricist of You are the only one should quit after hearing 'you're not a composer, I am not your song, strange chords different words' from this one. Good everything *

If love was a crime - really needs a mixed gender group singing it to each other in various combinations. A 'not quite' for me, but towards the top of the second rank

Soldiers of love - first boy band sound in a while and far too generic

1944 - ah, this is the multi-lingual Ukrainian one. The most political one (1944 was when the area, then part of the Soviet Union, was liberated in the Great Patriotic War) and pointedly including Tatar lyrics (Stalin shipped out large numbers of Tatars from the Crimea) - if Russia's in, this is not going to score well with them but it works very well as a song *

Icebreaker - nice start, then goes too far over the top, even for Eurovision

Midnight gold - back to rock, and probably the best of them

Fairytale - back to diva ballad. How well it does will probably depend on where it is. By this point, it's 'another one' for me, but good enough

What's the pressure - someone's heard Queen's Another one bites the dust, haven't they? It then moves into just as original Europop

So five contenders for me, out of forty two. (This is one reason why I don't watch...) Spotify only says which country they're from in a few cases. For a second, I wondered if Soldiers of love was the UK entry (and hoped it wasn't, it's so generic) but it's not: that's the male duo earlier. So no chance of a UK win...

If you do watch the second semi-final, please give a vote to Blue & Red or 1944.

This entry was originally posted at http://lovingboth.dreamwidth.org/560614.html, because despite having a permanent account, I have had enough of LJ's current owners trying to be evil. Please comment there using OpenID - have and if you have an LJ account, you can use it for your OpenID account. Or just join Dreamwidth! It only took a couple of minutes to copy all my entries here to there.